Fear of Longevity: Everyday Struggles in the Pharmaceutical Age of AIDS, Taiwan

Through an ethnographic study of civil society organisations (CSOs) in Taiwan, this research endeavours to explore how Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and biomedical approaches to controlling the epidemic have framed everyday life amongst ganranzhe (HIV infected individuals) and feiganranzhe (HIV uninfected individuals) from tongzhi (Comrades, LGBT populations) communities whose members are labelled as populations at risk. The health regime of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/AIDS in Taiwan, I argue, redistributes state power to local social bodies where the decentralised governance of sexual minorities and social deviants is exercised through compassionate voluntary labour. Moreover, this health regime has escalated and engendered everyday struggles which the affected endure and will continue to confront. In the face of ongoing social and physical suffering amongst vulnerable individuals, living longer is not necessarily the ideal which everyone prioritises in their everyday lives and connections with others. In the early days of AIDS, prior to the availability of triple cocktail therapy in 1997, the diagnosis of disease was an inevitable death sentence. Longevity was desired, but unattainable, by ganranzhe. In contemporary Taiwan, when ganranzhe can access pharmaceuticals which enable a prolonged life with prevention and treatment of HIV-related symptoms, an unexpected fear of longevity has emerged. Living longer, I argue and conclude from stories told by research participants in this study, is not necessarily desirable when the everyday struggles facing ganranzhe are not mitigated, and will continue through that longevity. There is an established scholarly discourse in anthropology and sociology critiquing the impact of global agencies on local responses to HIV/AIDS through their directed provision of funding support. The absence of foreign subsidies to the CSOs in Taiwan society provides a contrasting example of the development and direction of HIV/AIDS programs independent of direct global funding. This thesis argues that the state, even without international monetary aid, has become proficient at drawing on the culture of the tongzhi community to collaborate with CSOs and as a result to productively exercise its power over individuals. CSOs, working with the state, have crafted culturally sensitive programs for AIDS control and prevention which function as less coercive apparatuses to monitor, intervene and govern daily lives amongst the targeted populations. Universal approaches for curtailing the AIDS epidemic are after all not transparent healthcare measures where health amongst individuals of local communities are protected and improved. Global agendas on HIV/AIDS response can generate unforeseen adverse consequences which may burden the already social disadvantaged even further

Interpersonal Relationships among University Safety Professionals: The Impact of a Safety Departmentf

PresentationForming strong interpersonal relationships enables an organization or individual to achieve more favorable outcomes. The objectives of this study were to examine the frequency of interpersonal interactions among safety professionals (SPs) employed at Taiwanese universities and the factors that affected this frequency. To accomplish these objectives, we mailed questionnaires to a simple random sampling of 200 university SPs. Moreover, an interpersonal relationship scale was developed in this study; exploratory factor and internal consistency analyses revealed that the scale was valid and reliable. Results derived from the questionnaire revealed that in SP interpersonal relationships, general affairs department personnel, laboratory or internship unit supervisors, and teaching staff ranked highest in frequency of interactions. Multivariate analysis of variance results showed that establishing a safety department exerted a statistically significant effect on SP interpersonal relationships. SPs employed by universities with safety departments interacted more frequently with both internal and external relationships. Therefore, we suggest that universities without a safety department establish such a department to strengthen the labor safety and health structure, thereby benefitting SPs in fulfilling responsibilities to promote safety and health management

Extending Bilingual WordNet via Hierarchical Word Translation Classification

PACLIC 23 / City University of Hong Kong / 3-5 December 200

L-Arginine and L-Citrulline Supplementation Have Different Programming Effect on Regulatory T-Cells Function of Infantile Rats

Arginine is a semiessential amino acid in healthy adult human, but is essential for preterm, newborn or critically ill patients. Arginine can be supplied from our diet or de novo synthesis from citrulline. In conditions of sepsis or endotoxemia, arginine may be deficient and be accompanied with altered immune response. L-arginine supplementation can ameliorate dysregulated immune condition and improve prognosis. Many studies had tried L-arginine or L-citrulline supplementation to examine the effect on immune response in the adult population. Few had studied on the young children. In this study, we determined the effect of L-arginine and L-citrulline supplementation on the immune response of infantile rats. Male infantile rats received normal saline, L-arginine (200 mg/kg/day) or L-citrulline (200 mg/kg/day) intraperitoneally over postnatal day 8 to day 14. The infantile rats were then sacrificed. The blood was analyzed while the spleen was indicated for immune analysis after stimulation with concanavalin A (Con A) or lipopolysaccharide (LPS). We found L-arginine supplementation enhanced Th1 immune response by increasing IFN-γ production. Both the L-arginine and L-citrulline therapy can modulate regulatory T-cell (Treg) immune effects by increasing the IL-10 level. Only the L-citrulline group showed a TGF-β1 increase. Both L-arginine and L-citrulline therapy were also noted to decrease SMAD7 expression and enhance SIRT-1 abundance. However, FOXP3 expression was only modulated by L-citrulline treatment. We then concluded that L-arginine and L-citrulline supplementation can modulate the regulatory T-cells function differently for infantile rats

Benchmarking of eight recurrent neural network variants for breath phase and adventitious sound detection on a self-developed open-access lung sound database-HF_Lung_V1

A reliable, remote, and continuous real-time respiratory sound monitor with automated respiratory sound analysis ability is urgently required in many clinical scenarios-such as in monitoring disease progression of coronavirus disease 2019-to replace conventional auscultation with a handheld stethoscope. However, a robust computerized respiratory sound analysis algorithm has not yet been validated in practical applications. In this study, we developed a lung sound database (HF_Lung_V1) comprising 9,765 audio files of lung sounds (duration of 15 s each), 34,095 inhalation labels, 18,349 exhalation labels, 13,883 continuous adventitious sound (CAS) labels (comprising 8,457 wheeze labels, 686 stridor labels, and 4,740 rhonchi labels), and 15,606 discontinuous adventitious sound labels (all crackles). We conducted benchmark tests for long short-term memory (LSTM), gated recurrent unit (GRU), bidirectional LSTM (BiLSTM), bidirectional GRU (BiGRU), convolutional neural network (CNN)-LSTM, CNN-GRU, CNN-BiLSTM, and CNN-BiGRU models for breath phase detection and adventitious sound detection. We also conducted a performance comparison between the LSTM-based and GRU-based models, between unidirectional and bidirectional models, and between models with and without a CNN. The results revealed that these models exhibited adequate performance in lung sound analysis. The GRU-based models outperformed, in terms of F1 scores and areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves, the LSTM-based models in most of the defined tasks. Furthermore, all bidirectional models outperformed their unidirectional counterparts. Finally, the addition of a CNN improved the accuracy of lung sound analysis, especially in the CAS detection tasks.Comment: 48 pages, 8 figures. To be submitte

ULK1/2所构成的信号节点除控制细胞自噬外还控制葡萄糖代谢通路

文章简介在细胞感受到环境中营养物质和生长因子的提供量发生改变后,代谢通路的重编程对于维持此时胞内的稳态是非常重要的过程。ULK1和ULK2是传递外界应激信号至自噬发生的重要整合因子。本项研究发现,在缺少氨基酸和生长因子时,ULK1/2能直接磷酸化多个糖酵解相关的酶,包括己糖激酶(HK)、国家自然科学基金重点项目；国家科技部(973课题)；国家基础科学人才培养基金等的经费支持

Mutations of PIK3CA in gastric adenocarcinoma

BACKGROUND: Activation of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) through mutational inactivation of PTEN tumour suppressor gene is common in diverse cancer types, but rarely reported in gastric cancer. Recently, mutations in PIK3CA, which encodes the p110α catalytic subunit of PI3K, have been identified in various human cancers, including 3 of 12 gastric cancers. Eighty percent of these reported mutations clustered within 2 regions involving the helical and kinase domains. In vitro study on one of the "hot-spot" mutants has demonstrated it as an activating mutation. METHODS: Based on these data, we initiated PIK3CA mutation screening in 94 human gastric cancers by direct sequencing of the gene regions in which 80% of all the known PIK3CA mutations were found. We also examined PIK3CA expression level by extracting data from the previous large-scale gene expression profiling study. Using Significance Analysis of Microarrays (SAM), we further searched for genes that show correlating expression with PIK3CA. RESULTS: We have identified PIK3CA mutations in 4 cases (4.3%), all involving the previously reported hotspots. Among these 4 cases, 3 tumours demonstrated microsatellite instability and 2 tumours harboured concurrent KRAS mutation. Data extracted from microarray studies showed an increased expression of PIK3CA in gastric cancers when compared with the non-neoplastic gastric mucosae (p < 0.001). SAM further identified 2910 genes whose expression levels were positively associated with that of PIK3CA. CONCLUSION: Our data suggested that activation of the PI3K signalling pathway in gastric cancer may be achieved through up-regulation or mutation of PIK3CA, in which the latter may be a consequence of mismatch repair deficiency

ULK1/2 Constitute a Bifurcate Node Controlling Glucose Metabolic Fluxes in Addition to Autophagy

揭示了在外界能量供应缺乏时，细胞通过激活ULK1来介导葡萄糖分解代谢重编程以维持胞内的能量与氧化还原稳态的详细机制，并创新地发现了ULK1独立于自噬的关键功能。基于自噬和糖代谢与人类健康的重要相关性，该研究将很可能为我们预防和治疗各类代谢疾病提供新的思路和药物靶点。Metabolic reprogramming is fundamental to biological homeostasis, enabling cells to adjust metabolic routes after sensing altered availability of fuels and growth factors. ULK1 and ULK2 represent key integrators that relay metabolic stress signals to the autophagy machinery. Here, we demonstrate that, during deprivation of amino acid and growth factors, ULK1/2 directly phosphorylate key glycolytic enzymes including hexokinase (HK), phosphofructokinase 1 (PFK1), enolase 1 (ENO1), and the gluconeogenic enzyme fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase (FBP1). Phosphorylation of these enzymes leads to enhanced HK activity to sustain glucose uptake but reduced activity of FBP1 to block the gluconeogenic route and reduced activity of PFK1 and ENO1 to moderate drop of glucose-6-phosphate and to repartition more carbon flux to pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), maintaining cellular energy and redox homeostasis at cellular and organismal levels. These results identify ULK1/2 as a bifurcate-signaling node that sustains glucose metabolic fluxes besides initiation of autophagy in response to nutritional deprivation.State Key Program of National Natural Science of China， the 973 Program；National Natural Science Foundation of China for Fostering Talents in Basic Research ；the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China； and the 111 Project of Education of China